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Elizabeth_A Reeves

Avow

Synopsis

A Last Selkie Short Story.
Twenty years before Adrift, a young man named Ethan Tanner found out he had a inoperable malignant brain tumor and had less than a year to live.
Impossibly, help comes in a mythical form.

Author Biography

Legend has it that Elizabeth A Reeves was born with a book in her hands and immediately requested a pony. Though this story is questionable, it is true that books and horses have been consistent themes in her life. Born in Massachusetts, she was quickly transplanted to Arizona by a professor father and creativity-driven mother, who is the one responsible for saying "If you can't find a book that you want to read, write a book you want to read."
In her spare time, she likes to knit, weave, hatch chickens, and chase after her husband and four sons.

Author Insight

One Year to Live?

There is something so cruel about a person, whether young or old, hearing the sentence of one year left to their lives.
Unlike Ethan, I do know about the history of brain tumors in my family. There is always the possibility of hearing those words someday. Ethan, though, had no family history. It feels so hopeless. I love trying to portray the glowing beams of hope that appear in our darkest hours.

Book Excerpt

Avow

From the outside he looked perfect, like any
other healthy twenty year old with a full life ahead of him. College, marriage,
a family, everything that a child bounced from one foster home to another his
whole life craved, all of that should have been in his future.

“One year,” Ethan whispered. “One year.”

He closed his eyes against the overwhelming
flood of hopelessness.

He couldn’t believe it. Even though the
doctors had shown him images of the mass that was growing virulently in his
brain, he could not comprehend what was happening to him.

“Do you have a family history of brain
tumors?” He’d been asked.

“I don’t know,” Was all he could answer. How
could he explain that he had been dumped off outside of a grocery store at the
ripe age of three, clutching an ice cream cone and screaming for his mother? “I
don’t have any family history.”

Ethan struck out at the steering wheel,
jumping when it beeped in protest.

“I have no family,” he muttered. “I have no
family and now I am going to die. I am alone and I’m going to die.”